Tory backbencher wins bid for abortion-related debate in House of Commons

Tory backbencher Stephen Woodworth wins bid for abortion-related debate in House of Commons

By Jordan Press

OTTAWA — A controversial proposal from a Conservative backbencher to legally define fetuses as human beings — and reopen the abortion debate — will have its day in the House of Commons.

Tory MP Stephen Woodworth wants Parliament to create a committee of politicians whose task it will be to review a law that stops short of defining unborn children as “human beings.”

A committee of MPs has agreed to give Woodworth at least one hour of debate sometime in April. He will receive a second hour of debate sometime either in late spring or early fall.

If parliamentarians agree to Woodworth’s request, a special committee would review Section 223 of the Criminal Code, which says a child becomes “a human being . . . when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”

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That section of the Criminal Code says a homicide on a child happens when someone “causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.”

The review, he argues, is needed because the law is based on a 400-year-old definition of human being.

“If a child five minutes before birth can be defined as not a human being, then the question is who’s next?” he argued.

Woodworth said his proposal will be wrapped up in the emotions that surround the abortion debate, but he doesn’t intend to back down even though his own party has said the government has no interest in reopening the abortion debate.

“The prime minister and justice minister have to speak for themselves. I don’t take any issue with any statement that the government won’t reopen this debate,” he said.